To make a long story short though and cut to the chase as it were (hah, puns!) I ended up coming up with this to explain why I think most scenes in fiction depicting bladed combat are unrealistically long to the point of breaking suspension of disbelief and why my own get right to the point. (Ha, more puns!)

Part One: Who Am I and Why Do You Care What I Have to Say

Let’s start with the obvious questions out of the way and establish my credentials on the topic. Because we all know that everyone and their mother on the internet has “‘pinions” on hand-to-hand combat and how it works out. So up front, no, I have not ever been in a knife fight. How can we tell that, outside of the fact that I just said so? Because I’m here to tell you that I’ve never been in a knife fight!

See, that’s one of the first lessons drilled into everyone that studies the martial art I practiced, Pekiti Tirsia Kali. It’s also a lesson that gets reiterated regularly, and with various different pithy ways of stating it. “No one wins a knife fight.” “The loser dies in the alley and the winner dies in the ambulance.” “If you pull a blade, be ready to be cut.”

Pekiti Tirsia Kali is different from your run-of-the-mill Karate class ran out of a rented strip mall space. As far as the mindset and practice go, it’s got more in common with the knife techniques trained by the British commandos in World War II than your eight year old's Taekwondo class. That's not a joke by the way, Pekiti Tirsia is the official hand-to-hand combat system of the Filipino Special Operations Forces. I'll talk more about it another day but you should get the idea, it's a serious martial system built for real combat.

So if I don’t have a ton of real world knife fight experience under my belt, then surely I’m some sort of high ranked practitioner of the art right? Nope, sorry to disappoint again but I’m not. To tell the truth, I don’t think I ever received any kind of ranking at all, I certainly never tested for one. If you’re looking for real world masters and teachers, I can point you in their direction.

You have the ones most everyone recognizes of course, Doug Marcaida whom you may recognize from Forged in Fire and Dan Inosanto who trained Bruce Lee in Filipino Martial Arts back in the day. Then you have the big names in the system itself. Grand Tuhon Leo T. Gaje Jr. is the head of the system, while Tuhon Bill Mcgrath is the head of Pekiti Tirsia International and Tuhon Rommel Tortal is the head of PTK World Federation as well as the inheritor of the system from Grand Tuhon. I have received distance instruction and poured over lessons from all of these men. For my own personal teachers, I had the privilege of learning under Guro Sean Dapilmoto and Agalon Rob Slomkowski in the San Antonio area as well as Tuhons Arlene and Malcolm Stevens in the Baltimore area.

All this to say that while I am not a master or someone who has dedicated years to formal study of the art, I learned at the feet of those who have, and I remember my lessons well. That I am not a master Kali practitioner is due to my own inability to dedicate the time necessary, not any lacking in their teaching. My words here are not pulled out of my ass, but are tried and true observations made by people who know.

Part Two: Some Basic Observations

So to understand why I write the knife combat in my stories the way I do, we first have to go over some basic, unavoidable truths about hand-to-hand combat in general. If you've had any real training on martial arts or combat systems then you're probably going to be nodding along with what I'm about to say, thinking it's common sense. But if my time in the Army has taught me one thing, it's that common sense ain't so common. So for everyone else, this quick primer is for you.

1) A physical fight in close quarters tends to go one of two ways: either one side is so physically superior or possesses so much more knowledge and experience that they completely and swiftly overwhelm the other party; or, if the two sides are more evenly matched, the affair devolves essentially into a battle of attrition, both sides attempting to wear the other out first while conserving their own energy.

What this means: The bulk of hand-to-hand combat between human beings involves a case of fast escalation of hostilities followed by one of the two combatants quickly establishing overwhelming physical superiority over their opponent. This is where we see the viral videos of two young men arguing, preparing to fight, only for one to immediately knock their opponent out with a single punch or quickly manhandle them into yielding. This can be through superior speed, strength, or skill but most often involves superior strength.

In cases where this does not happen, due typically to evenly matched characteristics between the two, the fight naturally degrades into exchanges of strikes, grappling, and maneuvers where each side tries to outlast the other. This is where we see the videos of 5+ minute long fights between individuals that almost inevitably end up with them wrestling each other on the ground, as well as the bulk of MMA matches. The difference we see here is in skill between the two examples but not in practical outcome of how the fight flows.

2) There is a point at which physical disparity between combatants is so great that no amount of skill or experience can reliably overcome it. That threshold is not fixed but varies depending on the relative physical and experiential capabilities of the fighters.

What this means: Skill and experience will trump pure physical advantages such as size, strength, speed, or endurance but this is only up to a point. And that point changes based on the differences between the two fighters. The more skilled one fighter is, the greater their capability against someone who has a significant physical advantage against them. However, past a certain point the physical advantage becomes so overwhelming that no amount of skill can close the gap.

To put this into a quick and dirty example, assume for a moment that both Bruce Lee and Andre the Giant were both still alive, in the prime of their life, and put into an empty space with no escape but to beat the other in a fight. While there is a nonzero chance that the 5’8, 140 lbs Bruce COULD beat the 7’4, 520 lbs Andre in these circumstances, the chances that he WOULD are pretty damn small.

And now we turn things on their head with this final observation.

3) The introduction of blades both increases the chances of the first outcome exponentially as well as nearly completely tosses normal hand-to-hand combat dynamics involving strength and endurance on their head. In a close quarters blade fight, be it with knives, machetes, short swords, what have you, the winning physical parameters are speed, reflex/reaction time, and spatial awareness. The moment blades get introduced into a fight, the question changes from who is the strongest to who is the fastest, because the goal has now become for either opponent to get in, get their opponent with a lethal strike, and then get out without taking lethal damage themselves. Or preferably any damage at all if they can manage it.

Part Three: Bringing it all Together

It's that final point that feeds into why I wrote the blade work in Eastern Blood Price to be short, precise, and brutal. Because in reality, that's how it works. People underestimate just how deadly and debilitating even small cuts can be.

I personally lay a large portion of this to just how unaccustomed people in the West are these days to witnessing much less experiencing real bodily trauma. That coupled with the the tradition in our stories of showing heroes and villains clashing epically for absurd amounts of time all while landing crippling wounds on each other that they somehow shrug off through sheer willpower. But that's a rant for another day. For now, we focus on realism and how quickly a real world blade fight can go.

This is something that has been studied for many years, with various ways of testing the hypotheses. The most common of these tests is one that most practiced firearm users will have heard of, the infamous “21 foot rule” also known as the Tueller Drill. For anyone who is unfamiliar, the testing has found that for an average person, if an attacker is within 21 feet of you then you are unlikely to be able get your gun from your holster and get a shot on them in time before they stab you. An average man is able to cross the distance of 21 feet in about 1.5 seconds. Similar studies have shown that the average “knife fight” last approximately 23 seconds, with about half lasting less than 14 seconds and around 80% lasting less than 32 seconds. And all of that is faster than it just took me to re-read this paragraph out loud, give it a try and I hope that it drives home the point.

So moving on to bringing this back into the realm of fiction, I write with an eye towards realism in how things work in combat. Please excuse me tooting my own horn, but I'm going to use an excerpt from Eastern Blood Price to show how a bit about how a realistic knife fight in fiction would look. Consider the following:

The machete continued its deadly arc, cutting through space that should have contained Anya's flesh and bone. But with timing so perfect it appeared choreographed, she ducked—a slight, economical movement that allowed the blade to pass a hairsbreadth above her head. The weapon sliced through empty air, disturbing nothing but raindrops.

Chakri's momentum carried him forward, his body temporarily off-balance from the force he'd put behind a strike that met no resistance. In that fractional moment of vulnerability, Anya moved.

The kerambit sat in her grip as if part of her hand. With surgical precision, she flicked her wrist, the blade finding the exact point where Chakri's flexor tendon ran beneath the skin of his wrist.

The cut itself was almost delicate, a precise incision. But the effect was immediate. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc, droplets merging with the rain to create pale red patterns against the concrete. The machete clattered from Chakri's suddenly nerveless fingers, striking the ground with a metallic ring that echoed in the confined space.

So what we have here is a very basic set of movements. Chakri tries to bisect her with a diagonal slash coming from his right shoulder down to his left hip. We call this an "Angle 1" in Kali. She ducks under it at the last second, leaving Chakri momentarily off balance and exposed. She quickly takes advantage of the vulnerability by taking her kerambit and slashing Chakri across his right wrist deep enough to sever the tendons, causing him to lose the ability to hold the weapon.

This maneuver is part of an established doctrine within PTK known as “defanging the snake” and it refers to the tactic of attacking/counterattacking the opponent’s limbs in order to render them no longer a threat. While the timing of the maneuver, known as “gunting” or “scissors” in English, requires practice the actual cut is absurdly easy and requires little force with a properly sharp blade. As anyone with unfortunate experience with compulsive cutters can attest.

The keys here are Anya's spatial awareness, her timing, and the speed of her reactions as well as her counter. Through her skill and experience, Anya was able to judge the angle of the attack, move herself appropriately to avoid it while ensuring she was positioned to perform her counter. Then she executed.

Now obviously, in the real world someone with a machete coming at their face is going to react with more than just a slight duck to dodge it but for the case of fiction we want to err on the side of "rule of cool" of course. Equally obviously, given my stated predisposition to realism, Anya is working with an advantage here that allows her to pull this off that I've not told you. If you want to know more, you can discover it in the book.

Anyway, in this one simple exchange we see how through superior skill, timing, reflexes, and spatial awareness that Anya quickly moves to establish the fight dominance that I spoke about earlier.

And in a real world incident, things would most likely end right here. Because in the real world, that wound is not only extremely debilitating (someone with their tendons cut like this will have months if not years of physical therapy to look forward to in order to gain even a fraction of usage out of that hand again) but also actually a slow death sentence, as cutting deep enough to get the tendons also necessitates cutting the radial artery, which can easily end up with a bleedout if untreated.

Obviously, the fight against Chakri doesn't end exactly right there in Eastern Blood Price but it still serves to demonstrate what I'm talking about. In the end, real knife fights don’t give you time for elaborate choreography, they’re over almost before they start and typically decided by a single, precise strike. By keeping my scenes short, precise, and brutal, I aim to honor that reality while delivering the tension fiction demands. I like to think it puts me a cut above the rest (thought I forgot, but one last to send you off with!), and I hope you’ll enjoy reading these exchanges in my works as much as I do writing them.

Alright folks, the Good Idea Fairy’s been buzzing around and it looks like it got the XO because he’s looking for bodies, which means it’s time to put out our smokes and make ourselves scarce.

—Riley

Mission is a go! Sitrep to follow:

Location: Saiyaburi Island, 09°35.1′N, 102°12.0′E

VIP: Ekaterina “Katya” Romanova, age 22 – Russian oligarch’s daughter

Situation: Katya currently held by Khmer Syndicate after ambush. Security detail presumed KIA. Hostiles armed and expecting extraction attempt. Local police and government compromised Russian underworld interest—possible double-cross.

Mission: Infiltrate Saiyaburi City, locate and extract Katya. Avoid detection by Syndicate, Bratva, local authorities. Deliver target safely to rendezvous in Pattaya. Minimize collateral; exfil as clean as possible.

Threats: Khmer Syndicate (primary), Russian criminal elements, Potential third parties (mercs, rival gangs, corrupt officials)

Assets: Fixer (Somchai) for intel/logistics/equipment, equipment cache pre-staged (09°35.5′N, 102°11.6′E), The Fiddler’s Green Bar (Neutral Ground). Echo stands ready

ROE: Clandestine—avoid open engagement where possible. Extraction priority; neutralize only direct threats. No contact with external law enforcement.

See you on the other side.


For enjoyers of Jonathan Maberry, Larry Correia, and Jim Butcher — the extraction begins here. Secure your copy of Eastern Blood Price today!

https://a.co/d/02jpVKdq

The man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war, and afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands— love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper—his hands remember the rifle and the power the rifle proffered. The cold weight, the buttstock in the shoulder, the sexy slope and fall of the trigger guard.

Many of you are probably ready to tear into me, about how I stole that from the opening monologue of Jarhead. Some fewer of you may recognize it as a direct quote from the book itself instead of the shortened version produced for said monologue with just the punchiest parts left intact. Regardless, my little homage to Anthony Swofford there serves a point, but it’s one that we’ll get to later.

For as far back as the first vaguely human predecessor ape slapped another ape before running behind its parent who runs the place to avoid the consequences, there have been three constants to the human experience. First, bad things happen to innocent people, and bad people are going to do bad things. Second, society does its best to deal with these issues, and finally third society often ends up either incapable or outright unwilling to ensure proper redress. It is due to these three constants of the human experience that we have the concept of the hero in the first place.

Across myth, legend, pulp, and modern cinema, one figure appears again and again, that of the lone operator. The competent outsider who acts not because he is authorized, but because no one else can or will.

It all begins with the mythic, the strongman such as Heracles or Samson. Born in a time before institutions, before society could do much more than cling to a patch of dirt and attempt to impose order upon it, they existed as a way to impose that order. Heracles did not attempt to debate the Lernaen Hydra or the Nemean Lion, and Samson did not negotiate with the Philistines. They killed them, and in doing so they brought peace for their people and justice for communities that had no other means of redress.

As society evolved, so too did the role of the hero. The legend of King Arthur centers on the restoration of legitimacy. His appearance signals the return of the rightful institution through which order can once again be administered with wisdom and restraint. Meanwhile, Robin Hood provides us with the first glimpse of the vigilante hero. His legend is more than the oft-repeated refrain of “robbing the rich to give to the poor.” It is a story about a man forced into a position of rebellion against an illegitimate, cruel, and maladaptive authority. He provides the people with a release valve, a way to redress the wrongs perpetrated by King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham’s regime and receive justice.

As the world grew larger, denser, and more impersonal, the hero was forced to change once again. It was no longer enough to offer redress after the fact. There were too many victims, too many crimes, and too little certainty that justice would ever arrive in time. In the modern city, suffering could vanish beneath the noise of millions.

The hero therefore became proactive. No longer merely a solver of wrongs, he became a warning. The modern hero exists not only to punish evil, but to deter it. He stands forth to draw a clear line and declare, through action rather than decree, these acts will not be tolerated.

Walter B. Gibson’s The Shadow provides the first true template for this figure. Seen, heard, and felt only when he chooses, The Shadow becomes a presence rather than a man. He exists as an omnipresent fear haunting the criminal underworld of 1930s New York. He does not merely dispense retributive justice; he offers certainty. Crime will be answered, and it will be answered decisively.

This mantle would later pass to The Shadow’s most famous successor: Bruce Wayne, the Batman. Here the archetype solidifies. The lone operator now exists in a world where the police cannot act quickly enough and the courts cannot or will not act decisively. When institutions stall, he moves. When systems fail to act, he intervenes, operating in the narrow and dangerous space between what the law permits and what morality demands.

But when faith in institutions collapses entirely, the lone operator ceases to be symbolic and instead becomes personal. Following in the footsteps of figures like The Shadow and Batman are a host of modern characters who no longer act as ideals, but as reactions. The Punisher, Paul Kersey of Death Wish, and the McManus brothers of The Boondock Saints do not emerge from myth or destiny, but from grievance, loss, and moral exhaustion.

These are not heroes born to the role like the myths of old nor even people of preternatural capability like the heroes that provided their template. They are ordinary people who reach a breaking point—individuals who come to believe that the suffering around them has become too pervasive, too ignored, or too accepted to be left unanswered. In these stories, the lone operator is no longer a distant figure haunting the night, striving to right every wrong in the city. He is the neighbor. The veteran. The professional. The working man.

The fantasy shifts uncomfortably close, suggesting not that anyone should act this way, but that under sufficient pressure, anyone might. That upon confrontation with the true ugliness in this world that everyone possesses a point at which the need to do something—anything—to at least redress the wrongs committed upon them and theirs. The need overcomes everything else, every instinct to prioritize their own well-being and comfort, and so they set out on their crusade.

Which brings us, finally, to the present. Why does this archetype still resonate today, even in a world saturated with laws, agencies, oversight, and systems? A world carefully tuned to discourage individuals from standing apart, from drawing hard lines, from accepting personal responsibility beyond what procedure allows.

The answer is counterintuitive. People do not long for violence. Most would gladly choose the modern world—with all its rules, controls, and constraints—over any earlier era, if it meant a life free from hardship. What they long for instead is competent moral action. For a moment when action matters again. For the reassurance that, if pressed, they could be the one to stand when standing is required.

Even if this belief is illusory, the story of the lone operator endures because it offers comfort. It reminds us that we are more than interchangeable parts in an impersonal machine. That we possess agency. That there exists, somewhere within us, the capacity to refuse quiet submission when confronted with injustice. Not because we wish for chaos or bloodshed, but because we want to believe that responsibility, when it truly matters, can still be carried by a single individual who finally decides “enough is enough.”

When Anthony Swofford wrote about the rifle, he was not writing about violence. That much is certain, even if you could get a dozen different answers from a dozen different people as to what he intended with that section. To me, he was writing about purpose. About a time in a person’s life when responsibility was unmistakable. When the enemy was known, the mission was clear, and action followed understanding. Long after the rifle is turned in, that sense of clarity and a longing for it remains. The hands remember the weapon itself, of course, but more they remember what it represented.

I have spent my entire adult life chasing that same purpose. Not in fiction, but in the margins of reality. I’ve tracked terrorists, insurgents, and transnational criminal organizations. I’ve spent years hunting those who preyed on others, identifying them, and placing them in the sights of systems designed to stop them. Even now, removed from those roles, I find myself drawn to the work in quieter ways, volunteering time and effort to help expose human traffickers and the like.

What lingers is not the work itself, but the moments when it ended without resolution. Times when the evidence was there, the truth was clear, and yet action never came. When the cost was deemed too high, the priority shifted elsewhere, or justice was deferred to a future that might never arrive. In those moments, evil was not defeated. Merely postponed.

It is in that space that the lone operator myth begins to whisper again. Not as a desire for violence, but as a longing for agency. For the idea that someone, somewhere, might be able to step forward when the system cannot. This is why the example of Senior Chief Shannon Kent resonated so deeply with me as I wrote Eastern Blood Price.

Fully capable of doing what I did, and more, Kent existed as one of the rare examples of someone in the modern day capable of conducting every stage of the hunt. Where I had to stop upon reaching the point of leading troops to target and leave the final decisive moment to them, Senior Chief Kent continued forward. She represented a parallel reality—one closer to the point of action, closer to consequence, closer to the weight of responsibility itself. Yet even there, I suspect, Kent encountered moments where duty required restraint rather than resolution.

Anya Vajra was born from that tension. Not as a fantasy of power, but as a vessel through which to explore the reality of carrying moral responsibility and consequences alone. A character who can act where I could not, because the question of what if refuses to let go. Fiction becomes the only place where that burden can be examined honestly—where purpose, agency, and consequence can all be held in the same hands at once.

Afterward: We’re one week out from the release of Eastern Blood Price. ARC Review copies have been sent out and the ratings and reviews should be coming in soon. If you’re interested in stories about a lone mercenary in high stakes missions, where actions have consequences and everyone carries the weight of their past decisions then maybe the series is for you. Doubly so if you like a little dash of the paranormal in your military fiction.

Alright folks, Sergeant Major’s on the warpath ‘cuz he just caught someone walking on his grass, which means it’s time to put out our smokes and make ourselves scarce.

—Riley

I’m setting up everything that is needed going forward. That includes stuff like putting the book on Amazon and other platforms in case readers want to buy from me directly, getting marketing set up, getting ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) ready and ARC reviewers vetted. Keep an eye out here and on my other accounts for announcements on where to go if you’re interested in signing up for ARC.

Part of the marketing process is going to involve me coming in here and doing more articles and short stories going forward, so expect that! I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep to a schedule, but now that the main book project is complete I can divert creative time to sprucing this place up a bit. And on that note, I plan on writing up another short story soon that will go here and potentially in Kristin McTiernan’s Black Market Fiction magazine. If I get accepted, expect that in March I believe.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you here with the cover and blurb for Eastern Blood Price to enjoy.

Kidnapping an oligarch’s daughter is one thing. Keeping her is another matter.

Katya Romanova doesn’t get to just disappear, even on a forgotten island in the Gulf of Thailand. When armed men storm her private beachside party and execute everyone but her, Katya knows exactly what this is: leverage. Her father’s enemies will use her to bend him, break him, or both.

But the Romanov family doesn’t bend. And the extraction she secures isn’t what anyone expected.

They call Anya Vajra “The Ghost.” She moves through Saiyaburi’s criminal underworld like she owns it, taking down enemies with skills that shouldn’t be possible. Some say she’s not entirely human. Katya’s starting to believe them.

What should be a clean extraction turns into a chase across back alleys, smuggler routes, and sweltering jungle. The island’s criminal network tightens around them. Escape routes close. And Katya begins to realize that the woman protecting her carries secrets darker than her father’s empire.

In Saiyaburi, every debt is paid in blood. And someone’s bill just came due.

With it being spooky season, I thought it appropriate to share a little spooky story of my own. This is a real account, from me and my own experiences in Iraq where I encountered…well I don’t really know what I encountered. I’ll let you all decide.

If you prefer to listen instead of read, and if you don’t mind my absolutely amateurish attempt to make an audio recording then feel free to enjoy the audio version of this story instead. And Happy Halloween!

• Credit to CO.AG Music for the background music utilized in this recording.

Eyes in the Dark

More of this story is true than you would believe. I’ve changed the names of the other people mentioned to protect their privacy.

They called it Combat Outpost 9, or COP 9 for short. A tiny speck of T-walls and Tesco barriers sat in the desert beside the stretch of MSR Tampa that led from the Tallil Air Base to Nasiriyah. Tampa was the primary road that ran up from Kuwait all the way to Baghdad and beyond. I spent the winter of 2008–09 there.

The whole outpost was smaller than half a football field. I remember the first time I saw it I thought to myself that one good mortar strike could have wiped us out. Beyond the walls lay endless dunes and the highway to the city.

I was attached at the time to an artillery company in the 4-1 Cavalry, though I barely knew the men. The only face I remember is Staff Sergeant Martin, the night-shift NCO at the TOC (Tactical Operations Center), since every evening I checked in there for a quick SITREP (Situation Report) and debrief.

My mission was to man a remote sensor for the Brigade that broke more often than it worked. Only contractors at Tallil could fix it, and they typically took days to a week to show up. So I’d send my SITREP, then kill twelve hours waiting—hurry up and wait, the true Army motto.

To pass the time I’d lock up my work trailer and take a “smoke” break—despite having quit on my last deployment after nearly losing my head to a sniper. Mostly I’d end up in the TOC, joking with Martin and the tower guards, or staring out at the moonlit desert. The view of the night sky out there was the best I’ve ever seen. Like I said, sand dunes, stars, and nothing else. Until one night, there was.

It was January, not long after the New Year, the kind of night where the cold seeps into your bones despite the layers. I’d been on shift for about four hours, and the equipment had gone down again. With nothing better to do, I decided to take one of my walks.

I nodded to SSG Martin as I passed through the TOC. “Going for a wander,” I told him.

He barely looked up from his computer screen. “Don’t fall off the wall this time, Bolt.”

“That was one time,” I muttered, but he was already back to whatever report he was filing.

The night air hit me like a physical force when I stepped outside. I zipped my fleece jacket up to my chin and made my way to the eastern wall. It was my favorite spot. I could just barely see the faint glow of Nasiriyah in the distance, but mostly it was stars and darkness. That night they seemed especially bright, scattered across the black expanse like someone had tossed a handful of diamonds onto velvet.

I climbed onto the small observation platform and leaned against the wall, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The wind whispered across the sand, creating ripples that caught the moonlight. It was peaceful out here in a way that made the war seem distant, almost like a bad dream.

That’s when I noticed something odd.

About two hundred meters out, there was a shape that didn’t belong. At first, I thought it might be a shadow or maybe my eyes playing tricks, but as I focused, I could make out what looked like a figure moving slowly across the sand.

I blinked hard, wondering if exhaustion was getting to me. When I looked again, the figure was closer. Maybe one hundred meters out now. The figure moved with an unnatural grace. Not walking but, floating, somehow.

“What the hell?” I whispered to myself, pressing against the wall.

The shape stopped. For a moment, I thought it was just another shadow cast by the dunes. Then its head turned directly toward me. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the January night. It was looking at me. I was certain of it. Not just looking, but seeing through me somehow. I couldn’t make out any features, just a dark silhouette against the sand, but where its face should have been, I swear I saw two pinpricks of red, like embers in the darkness.

My pulse quickened as I put my hand on my rifle slung over my back out of habit. I fumbled for my radio, but my fingers felt numb and clumsy. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from those red pinpoints of light. They held me there, frozen in place. The wind died suddenly, leaving an unnatural stillness that made my ears ring.

Then it raised an arm, and pointed directly at me.

My throat constricted. I wanted to call out to the tower guards, but no sound came. The figure began moving again, not toward me, but parallel to the wall, keeping that exact same distance. It never turned away, those red eyes fixed on me as it glided across the sand.

I finally managed to get my radio to my mouth. “TOC, this is Echo Fife Bravo. Do you see anything out past the eastern wall? Over.”

Static crackled for a moment before a bored voice responded. “Negative, Sergeant. Nothing but sand. Over.”

“Are you sure? About one hundred meters out, just to the right of tower two? Over.”

This time there was a pause. I could almost see Martin frowning at his monitors, squinting at the feeds from our perimeter cameras.

“Negative, Bolt. I’ve got eyes on that whole sector. Nothing’s moving out there. You sure you’re not seeing things? Over.”

I kept my eyes fixed on the figure. It had stopped again and was perfectly still now, those red points of light boring into me.

“I’m looking right at it,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “How can you not see it? It’s right there.”

“Say again? You’re breaking up. Over.”

The radio slipped from my fingers, dangling by its cord from my vest. I reached toward my NODs (night optical device) I had stashed in my cargo pocket earlier to find my way around during blackout conditions. My hands trembled as I held them down over my eyes. Through the green haze of the goggles, the dunes appeared flat and distorted, but the figure, it wasn’t there.

I yanked the NODs away and looked again with my naked eyes. The red points still glowed, unwavering. My mouth went dry.

“Bolt, you okay out there?” Martin’s voice crackled through the radio at my shoulder.

I reached for it without taking my eyes off the figure. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thought I saw something. False alarm.”

Why did I say that? The words had tumbled out automatically, as if some deeper instinct was telling me to keep this to myself.

The figure began to move again, this time directly toward the wall where I stood. My heart hammered against my ribs, but I couldn’t move. Those red eyes held me transfixed. Every instinct screamed to run, but my body wouldn’t obey.

At fifty meters, the figure stopped again. Now I could see it more clearly. It wasn’t just a shadow—it was darkness given form. The edges of its silhouette wavered like smoke against the moonlit sand, but maintained a roughly human shape. No features were visible except those glowing crimson points.

Then, I heard movement coming up on my left flank. I turned, half expecting, half terrified at the idea of seeing another set of eyes. Instead, it was one of the men from the artillery company, walking up to relieve the current tower guard.

“Hey Private Leonard,” I called out, relief washing over me. “Do you see that? Out there?” I gestured toward where the shadowy figure stood watching us, those red eyes still fixed on my position.

The soldier approached, rifle slung casually across his chest, and followed my pointing finger, squinting into the darkness. “See what, Sergeant?”

I turned back, finger raised to point at the red eyes, but the space where the figure had stood was empty. Just sand and shadows. I blinked hard, scanning the dunes, but there was nothing there. No movement, no glowing points, no impossible dark shapes.

“I...” My words died in my throat. “I thought I saw something.”

“Everything alright, Sergeant?” The soldier’s voice held that careful tone people use when they think you might be unstable.

“I’m fine,” I said, lowering my arm. “Just the shadows playing tricks, I guess.”

He nodded slowly, giving me that look soldiers sometimes give the others they think are losing it. I couldn’t blame him.

“Sure, Sergeant, whatever you say.” He climbed up to the tower, nodding politely before turning away.

I stayed frozen at my position for another ten minutes, scanning the darkness, but nothing appeared. Eventually, the cold drove me back inside. I returned to the TOC, half expecting Martin to make a comment about my strange radio call, but he was deep in conversation with someone from his Battalion.

Back in my CHU after the end of my shift, I sat on my cot with my head in my hands. The logical part of my brain offered explanations: fatigue, stress, the infamous desert mirages. But none of them felt right. The image of those red eyes boring into me was burned into my mind.

I didn’t sleep that day. I lay awake staring at the metal ceiling, listening to the generators humming outside, wondering if I was starting to crack. We’d all heard stories of guys coming back different, seeing things that weren’t there. It wouldn’t be the first time a soldier lost his grip out here. The desert does things to people. The isolation. The constant vigilance.

But I knew what I’d seen.

The next night, my equipment was still down. I sent in my report, tried to get some busy work done, and eventually found myself drawn back to the eastern wall almost as if pulled by an invisible thread. I told myself I was just doing my rounds, checking the perimeter like any good soldier would.

But I knew the truth. I was looking for it. The compulsion was so strong I didn’t even bother checking in with Martin first. I just went straight to the same spot where I’d seen... whatever it was.

I told myself I was being stupid. That I should be writing up requisition forms for the sensor repairs or catching up on sleep. But instead, there I was, standing in the biting cold again, staring out at the dunes.

Nothing. Just sand and stars.

I waited for nearly an hour, the cold seeping through my uniform until my fingers went numb. Nothing appeared. Part of me was relieved—maybe I had imagined it after all. The other part felt strangely disappointed.

I made my way back to my station, trying to focus on the broken equipment and the mindless tasks that filled the remaining hours of my shift. When morning came, I stumbled to my CHU, collapsed onto my cot, and for the first time in days, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. No red eyes haunted me there.

The next night went the same way. I finished my reports, then found myself drawn to that same spot on the eastern wall. Again, nothing but sand, stars and the distant glow of Nasiriyah. The night after was the same. And the night after that.

By the fifth night, I’d almost convinced myself that what I’d seen had been a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and stress. Almost. There was still that nagging feeling in the back of my mind, a certainty that wouldn’t let go.

On the sixth night, I almost didn’t go. My equipment had finally been fixed by a contractor who’d shown up that afternoon, grumbling about the convoy from Tallil. I had actual work to do now, monitoring the sensor feeds, logging the data. But during a lull in work to do around 0300 hours, that familiar pull returned, stronger than before.

I tried to ignore it. I really did. But it was like an itch under my skin, impossible to dismiss.

“Screw it,” I muttered, securing my station and heading out.

The night was particularly cold, with a wind that cut through my fleece like it wasn’t even there. I hunched my shoulders against it as I made my way to the eastern wall. The stars were hidden behind a thin layer of high clouds, casting the desert in deeper darkness than usual.

I climbed to my spot, and started my vigil. I didn’t have to wait long. I was leaning against the wall, my back to the outpost, staring out at the endless dunes when that familiar sensation crept over me—the feeling of being watched. The hairs on my neck stood up before I even turned my head.

There it was. One hundred meters out, just as before. The shadow figure stood perfectly still against the rippling dunes, those twin points of crimson light fixed on me with terrible intensity.

Then it moved. The arm rose again, just as it had that first night, but this time it wasn’t pointing at me. The shadowy limb was extended outward, away from me, pointing toward something in the distance. I froze, unsure if this was a warning or a threat.

The figure remained motionless, that shadowy arm still outstretched, clearly indicating I should look in that direction.

I hesitated. Every instinct screamed not to take my eyes off the entity, as if it might charge forward the moment I looked away. But some feeling within me screamed at me that I needed to pay attention and look at what it was pointing at.

I slowly turned my gaze to follow the direction of its pointing finger. At first, I saw nothing but the familiar landscape of rippling dunes and darkness. Then, almost imperceptibly, something shifted in the distance—a subtle movement against the stillness of the desert night.

My breath caught. I blinked hard, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The movement was too far away and the night too dark. I pull up my NODs and watch the area like a hawk. The movement comes again, clearer this time and I can start to make out details. I realize that I’m seeing people out there. People where there shouldn’t be any, especially at this time of night.

My heart races. Three figures, maybe four, moving with purpose across the dunes. I fumble for my radio.

“TOC, this is Echo Fife Bravo. Multiple personnel, eastern sector, approximately eight hundred meters out. Moving in formation. Over.”

A pause, then Martin’s voice crackles through. “Echo Fife Bravo, say again? You seeing shadows again, Bolt?”

“Negative, TOC. This is real. Three to four personnel, moving tactically. Check your cameras, sector two-niner. Over.”

I wait, heart pounding, as the silence stretches over the radio. Then:

“Shit, you’re right.” Martin’s voice is different now, all business. “I’ve got them on thermal. Four tangos, moving in a tactical formation. How the hell did you spot them before our systems?”

I don’t answer. Can’t answer. Because I’m looking back at the shadow figure with the red eyes. It hasn’t moved, arm still extended toward the infiltrators.

“QRF is moving,” Martin says through the radio. “Stay where you are, keep eyes on Bolt. Do not engage.”

The outpost erupts into controlled chaos behind me. I hear the quick shuffle of boots, the metallic clicks of weapons being readied. The Quick Reaction Force is deploying—six men who will intercept the approaching threat.

But I can’t take my eyes off the shadow figure. Something passes between us in that moment. A silent acknowledgment. As if we’ve entered into some unspoken pact that I don’t fully understand.

I look back at the red eyes and I get the feeling they are satisfied. Their glow seems to pulse once, brighter than before, as if confirming my suspicion.

Without warning, a violent gust of scorching air slams into me, completely at odds with the January chill. The desert wind carries stinging particles that force me to shield my face. Sand scrapes against my cheeks and finds its way into my eyes despite my efforts to protect them.

“Damn it,” I hiss, blinking furiously, tears streaming down my face as my body tries to flush out the irritants.

When my vision finally clears, the figure is gone. Just empty desert stares back at me, innocent and unchanged, as if nothing had been there at all. But I know what I saw. I know what it did.

Behind me, the QRF is already moving out through the small guard post entrance at the north side of the base. Their shadows stretch long across the sand under the moonlight as they fan out in a practiced formation. I hear Martin barking coordinates through the radio, directing them toward the infiltrators who are still unaware they’ve been spotted.

I watched the QRF move with practiced precision into the darkness, fading into shadows themselves. I stayed at my post, scanning the desert for any sign of the red-eyed figure, but it remained gone. The radio chatter in my ear told me the team had made contact. Short bursts of gunfire echoed across the dunes, but it was over quickly.

Three hours later, as dawn broke over the outpost, I sat in the TOC with SSG Martin. His face was drawn but satisfied as he handed me a steaming cup of coffee.

“Been a hell of a night,” he said, his voice low enough that the others in the room couldn’t hear. “How did you spot them, Bolt? They were using every trick in the book to stay hidden.”

I stared into my coffee, What could I say? That a shadow with red eyes had pointed them out to me? I’d be on the next transport to a psych evaluation. “Just got lucky, I guess.”

Martin snorted. “Bullshit. But I don’t care how you did it. You did good.”

Two days later, Martin pulled me aside during my shift. We walked to the small smoking area behind the TOC, a square of gravel with two folding chairs and a coffee can for butts. No one else was around.

“Thought you might want to know what the interrogators found,” he said, lighting a cigarette. The flame briefly illuminated the dark circles under his eyes. “Those guys you spotted? They’d been setting up for days.”

“Setting up?” I asked.

Martin exhaled a plume of smoke. “They had a mortar tube and about a dozen rounds cached in the sand not far from where we intercepted them. Word we got back is that they’d been moving it piece by piece over the last three nights after scoping us out about a week ago.”

That lined up with when I first saw the eyes. I swallowed, my throat suddenly very dry. “A mortar attack?”

“Yeah. The plan was simple but nasty,” Martin continued, crushing his cigarette under his boot. “They were going to set up just beyond our sensor range and drop those shells right onto us while we all slept.”

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the desert night. My mind flashed back to my first impression of COP 9: one good mortar strike could wipe us all out.

“Jesus,” I whispered. “With the way this place is laid out...”

Martin nodded grimly. “Yeah. Exactly.” He didn’t elaborate. Neither one of us needed it. We both knew how things could have turned out differently.

There was talk for a little while over an award or recognition, neither of which ever came. I never cared either way, as I knew what really saved us that night. About two months later, command came down to close up shop at COP 9 and hand it over to the Iraqi forces.

I never saw the eyes again, even though I continued to step out and look over the walls sometimes in the dead of the night.

If you’re reading this, you either:

• stumbled here by accident

• are doomscrolling and hit the wrong link

• are my mom (Hi mom!) or one of my friends (Hi friends!)

• got referred to me by someone more well known (let me know in the comments so I can give them a thank you!)

• actually read something I wrote and wanted more (Literally impossible as of yet, please choose another answer)

Whatever the case, welcome to my corner of the internet.

My name’s Riley C. Bolt, and I’m writing The Anya Vajra Mission Files, a pulp‑action thriller series with just enough noir to make you want to buy a fedora and take your whiskey neat from now on. First book’s called Eastern Blood Price. It’s about a young woman in way over her head, her protector with a past, an island with a body count to make Baghdad blush, and if I’m doing it right, enough shootouts, knife fights, and chase scenes to resurrect the ghost of the 80s.

That lady up there in my profile picture and near the top of the article? That’s our series protagonist Anya. I hope you all will enjoy reading about her as I have so far writing about her.

This space? This is where I stay in touch with readers. Think of it like a smoke pit or for you non-military/veteran types, the office water cooler. This is where we talk shop, swap stories, and shoot the shit while waiting for the next hard time on the calendar.

What you can expect here:

• Updates on new books, releases, and progress reports (when I feel like sharing just how far behind I am).

• Occasional bonus material. Think excerpts, short stories, deleted scenes, maybe even character sketches if I can find an artist and drum up the cash.

• Commentary on pulp fiction, noir, the action genre, military fiction, writing in general, martial arts, old school sci-fi/fantasy, comics/games/other nerd shit, and whatever else crosses my mind.

• Probably a few war stories and half‑baked philosophy thrown in for good measure.

What you won’t get:

• Endless sales pitches for my books.

• Polished corpo‑speak or honestly polished speech of any kind. Despite leaving the military a long time ago, and the war even longer, I have a grunt’s vocabulary and at this point I have no wish to change it.

• Disingenousness, I speak what I think and if I don’t feel I have enough information to have a full opinion on a subject then I’ll typically say so.

• Vetbro “I killed fiddy men! Buy X brand to be just like me!” bullshit.

I’ll try to keep it engaging, authentic, and maybe even worth your time. You can reply to posts or leave comments if you feel like telling me what you think, good or bad. Hopefully good. That said, I’m going to borrow a rule from a colleague of mine and post it right here at the very beginning of everything for all to see:

Thank you Kristin, I won’t steal though, I’ll “tactically acquire” like a true member of the E-4 Mafia.

If you’re here for the ride, hit the subscribe button, and welcome. I’m not currently running any kind of paid subscription so everything is free to read at your convenience. That may change one day, and I may start making some content for paid subscribers only but I imagine that’s a long way off.

If you’re not? Well, no hard feelings. There’s plenty out there for you to read instead.

Alright folks, First Sergeant is looking for bodies to fill a detail, which means it's time to put out our smokes and make ourselves scarce.

—Riley